


Emergency Exit : Body Language

by Cres



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 15:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17348129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cres/pseuds/Cres
Summary: Becoming human isn't just being self-aware. Humanity is much more complicated than that.





	Emergency Exit : Body Language

I stood, shaken and tearful in the snow. I couldn’t look up, my head felt so heavy. I felt the tips of someone’s fingers dig tenderly into my right shoulder, followed by Hank’s voice.

 

“You-” He cut himself off, seeming like he couldn’t formulate a proper sentence. I knew he was trying to be considerate.

 

He just squeezed me a little tighter and said he was sorry. He didn’t do anything wrong, but I couldn’t open my mouth to reject his apology. Another pair of feet made their way into my peripheral, these I knew to be Connor’s.

 

“We should go, you’re going to get sick.”

 

I followed him meekly to my car.

 

The car ride back from Kamski’s place was awkward. Connor insisted he should stay with me, and I lacked the energy to argue against him. My hands trembled in my lap as I sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly at his hands on my steering wheel. In between red stop lights, he would steal glances.

 

Conor had once again made it clear that he wasn’t going to leave me alone until he was sure I was fine. Unfortunately for me, fine was a state for which many ladders had to be climbed. And I liked to climb those ladders alone.

 

I flattened out my button up blouse before going up to the elevator, ringing for one. I looked over to him, noticing the little halo on his temple cycle from a bright yellow to a baby blue.

 

“Please, Connor.” Pleading to him felt useless. In fact, _it was_. But I knew that some way I’d get underneath that damn firewall.

 

The shuttle I called came right on cue, and I was very glad it was empty. The fewer people I had to come in contact with today, the better. I’ve had enough social interactions for at least a good three days.

 

I stepped in, Connor behind me, and he pressed the button to the 14th floor.

 

Again, I looked over at him. He was much more different from the day that I met him. Hank saw it too. We never mentioned it around him, for fear of how he might react to sharing dangerous qualities with the targeted prey. It’d be like studying the psychological tendencies of an incredibly fucked serial killer only to find out you had been helping him or sympathizing with him. That kind of revelation is delicate, and neither Hank or I are qualified in the slightest to break it to him. But there had to be some part of him that was aware of his choices, and what they meant. He was far too intelligent not to see it.

 

The deviant he chased and let get away to save Hank, the androids he chose not to shoot at the Eden Club, and now today. These are signs he was designed to pick up.

 

He caught me staring and made a face.

 

“Sorry, Danny. I’m not leaving until-“

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

 

The elevator chimed, and the doors opened. He let me out first, and I headed straight for my not-so-humble abode. I unlocked it, and let Connor go first.

 

As he entered my apartment, I lingered behind him to lock the door and drop my antique car keys in a bowl next to my coat rack. Turning to look at the rest of the space, I was surprised at how it hadn’t gotten messy. All these nights of coming home and throwing everything down and jumping on the couch hadn’t taken their toll yet. Abruptly, I felt the full weight of my stress and anxiety rush over me. As soon as I was in a place of comfort, the worst was there to follow me.

 

The altercation with Kamski left me near hollow. I had so many questions coming in, but walking out, I didn’t even know if those questions were the right ones to have. I rolled my shoulders back repeatedly, trying to ease the rocks that have lodged themselves into place. I looked over at Connor, who was eyeing me silently and gave him a look that hopefully translated to:

 

_I can’t take much more of this._

A part of me wanted to pry, ask him why he deliberated when he did, but I ultimately chose not to. Again, I couldn’t make him question his choices any more than he was already doing himself. The only thing in my agenda was to unwind in any way possible.

 

I rounded the corner of my kitchen breakfast table and reached up to the cupboards. The glasses my mother sent me were still up there.

 

“Connor, could you?” I called to him and gestured towards the top shelf.

 

He came over, and as he got closer, I noticed he still had snow on his clothes. As he reached up for a glass, I reached for his shoulder and brushed the snow gently off. He handed me the glass but didn’t step back.

 

I scanned his face, letting my unoccupied arm balance me against the countertop as I tried to find that spark of life in his perfect brown eyes.

 

“Are you going to borrow Hank’s coping mechanisms? You know, there are better ways to decompress.”

 

I sighed deeply and did a slow blink. He registered my reaction immediately and began talking again.

 

“You could meditate, drink a mug of chamomile tea, take a moderately warm shower, or-“

 

“Oh come on, you know none of that would work with me. I’m like a stress sponge. I need to be wrung out.” I wouldn’t usually interrupt him when he was trying to be helpful, but Connor had started to develop a wickedly facetious sense of humor, and he was getting way too good at it.

 

I turned my back to him and pulled a bottle of whiskey from the corner of the counter. I turned back around to get some ice cubes, but Connor already had them in hand. He reached past me and dropped them in my glass. I turned back around to pour the whiskey when he started talking again.

 

“Well, you could always partake in intercourse or masturbation. It is a very good stress relief.”

 

Whiskey now in hand, I took a decent swig before responding to his absurd suggestion.

 

“That’s inappropriate.”

 

“No, it’s not. You are 26, and as far as I’m aware you’re not in a relationship. Humans in their twenties tend to have nearly insatiable libidos.”

 

He was smiling. The fucker was smiling.

 

“I think you mean teenagers, my libido is very much _satiated_.” I said matter-of-factly.

 

“By whom, exactly?” Connor arched his brow, and his smirk widened.

 

I finished the glass with a second gulp and set it on the counter.

 

“Connor, you’re sick.” I tried to hide my embarrassment by pushing him back so that I could make it to my living room, but he stopped me.

 

He grabbed me by my elbow and held me there. His initially warm smile faded into a paler crease, and he no longer spoke in his default timbre.

 

“I don’t mean to be critical. I’m trying to show you that it’s not easy to see you so visibly distraught. “ His voice was lower than I had ever heard it before, an untapped part of his range that felt like it had never existed before this moment.

 

I relaxed my frame and placed my open palms on his forearms. He was right, to some extent. I did want intimacy because I felt like I was nearing the age where I wouldn’t be desirable anymore. All this time alone, focusing on achieving things in my life for myself. No amount of accolades could make up for the simple fact that I was pathetically lonely. With a chip dug in my shoulder, I forced myself to believe I was getting too old for it. But even I knew that no one could ever always be right, and that included me. Usually, when people do things for a long time, they get good at it.

 

Usually.

 

“It’s okay, I understand. It’s good to know that there’s someone besides myself vying for my well being.”

 

I let my words linger in the air before adding to them, just to make sure I didn’t say anything I’d regret. The line of demarcation that painted Connor and I as two completely different entities was starting to blur more and more as the days went by. And right now, it was exceptionally thin.

 

He’d come up with his own little unique ways of caring for me. Listing off endless statics, going off about my dietary choices, and even going as far as suggesting a bedtime. Even though most of these actions could now be completed by my phone or the device on my bedside table, Connor wasn’t programmed for that. That was the special part.

 

I squeezed his arms as a sign of affection, a wordless thank you that I knew I wouldn’t be able to mouth out loud.

 

“Maybe there are more things that I can do, to relax you.” It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a precursor.

 

I decided to play along and asked him, “Like what?”

 

Unprecedented events always tend to be a guilty pleasure of mine. I’d like to assume a vast majority of other people like them too. Knowing what happens next can be soothing, even liberating to some extent. But simply not knowing what comes immediately after is the reason why humanity remains thriving to this day. I like it when I don’t know what’s gonna happen at the end of a chapter of a really good book. I like it when I order something new at a restaurant, and I don’t know whether it’ll be absolutely horrible, or my new favorite dish. I like it when I encounter someone who I don’t know whether we will be the best of colleagues, or we’ll despise each other. But I don’t think I’ve ever liked an unexpected outcome more than when Connor kissed me.

 

His hands crept from my elbows to the dimples in my lower back, I could feel the tips of his fingers gradually warming up. A light tug forward had me pressed up against him.

 

I knew androids were made to replicate humans in every possible physical sense, but I had no idea it’d feel like _this_.

 

Connor was lean but expertly built nonetheless. As soon as I felt my torso make contact with his, I wrapped my arms around it like a kid with a new toy.

 

I just assumed it was a much-needed hug.

 

 This seemed to be enough of an incentive for Connor to fully proceed with his plan of attack because as soon as my arms locked around him, he bent his head and kissed me.

 

I let him plant a couple kisses on my lips before reacting, wanting to know if he even knew how. And he obviously did. He was gentle, tender, and careful, almost hesitant.

 

As soon as I reminded myself of how impossibly wrong this was, I spoke up.

 

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I whispered quietly, revolting against my instinct to press further into him. I placed my hands on his chest and sighed heavily.

 

Never had I treated Connor like anything less than a person. To me, he was always real. It was challenging to make any other assumption with something, or rather _someone_ so genuine. I didn’t want to be responsible for Connor behaving differently than he should be, but my morals provided to be tougher to shake the more I spent time with him. This time was no exception.

 

As Connor waited for my elaboration, I realized three fundamental truths at the exact same time.

 

One, I felt _good_. I _liked_ it when he kissed me. In fact, I wanted to kiss him back. I hadn’t kissed someone since my freshman year of college.

 

Two, by laws of both man and nature, Connor _wasn’t_ someone. The skeptic and defensive side of me was not shy in reminding me of this. He is a machine created by people. And more importantly so, he was created to imitate. But...

 

Three, I was afraid. He had crossed the line, no doubt. He wasn’t programmed to please me, or look after my emotions. His sole purpose is to hunt deviants. What would happen to him if Cyberlife found out what was going on inside of him?

 

“You shouldn’t be doing this, it’s not right.” I straightened out my voice and my thoughts. This was the way to go.

 

“But…” Connor’s eyes met mine, his LED turned yellow. It cycled rapidly, and then his eyes darted across the room.

 

“Today, when Kamski asked me to shoot that girl. I...I just couldn’t. I looked at her and thought of you.”

 

With warm amber eyes, Conner kept me held still like a marble sculpture. I wanted to cry. Why would he think of me? What was I to him?

 

“It’s over, isn’t it? You’re a deviant now.” My eyes watered at the last phrase, and I felt heavy hearted.

 

“I am. But it's not your fault.” Still, he hadn’t looked away. And his LED hadn’t changed one bit. I sucked in a deep breath and let all the tension in my chest exit with my exhale.

 

“I used to be so scared of you, ya know? This is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt, with _anyone._ But...”

 

I spilled.

 

“It feels so shitty to say this, to even think that the things I’m feeling aren’t true. You’re here. I’m holding you, you’re holding me, but I can’t bring myself to accept everything that’s going on in my head right now. It’s all selfish and contrived, and I don’t deserve to see you this way.”

 

He placed his right hand on against the back of my head, and tenderly guided me into his chest. I didn’t protest this gesture, instead, let it happen.

 

“Okay, I think I understand. In that case, we’ll deal with it together.”

 

My phone rang soon after he spoke, and I let go of him to answer it.


End file.
